Her Roses
by Ollen70
Summary: She doesn’t really understand all of it, but she thinks she understands enough. Life has to go on, even when you think it probably shouldn’t. Marlene’s thoughts on the End, and what comes after it.


Ollen70: It's been awhile since I've written anything artsy or pointless, and I felt like taking a shot at it. I have this weird fondness for fleshing out minor characters. I hope you like it. I've added a few things in the update to make a few ideas a little more clear. Thanks so far to everyone who's read it.

Since I haven't yet seen Advent Children, this is obviously based on my own imagination instead. You can blame me for any discrepancies. As always, feedback is very welcome. I'd love to hear what you think.

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or any of the characters represented here. I mean no offense to their creators nor is any money being made from this story.

- - -

Because life has to go on, even when it feels like it shouldn't.

- - -

Final Fantasy VII - Her Roses

She remembers very little about the past, aside from what they teach in history classes. Sometimes, when she hears other people talk about it, it was almost like some far distant part of her can pull something out of it, some little piece of herself from so long ago, but she's never really sure how much of it is her memory and how much of it isn't.

There's some connection to flowers, but that doesn't make sense because she's always liked flowers. Or has she? One of the fragments, like a piece of a broken mirror lodged somewhere deep, where light doesn't always reach, is of a man. He seems almost normal at first. Wiry and pale, not like her father. Her foster father, she always has to remind herself.

She goes out into her garden this morning like she does every day, waiting for the sun to rise. It's not quite there yet - the sky's still opaline, heavier to the west, and the white band that stretches over the eastern bluffs grows brighter while she watches it. Trails of vapor mark the sky but otherwise it's very clear. Watching her breath hang in the air, she sinks into her shawl a little further.

The memory isn't of her birth father - she actually never knew him, and from what she's heard, even though her foster father never spoke poorly of him, she doesn't think she would have wanted to. The man from the memory is peculiar because of the gigantic sword he carried, or she thinks he carried. She isn't sure if that's part of the memory or something she added later. All she remembers is that he gave her a flower.

The sun rises like it always has. Some people say other things, like how it almost didn't once. She looks up, watching the morning blossom like the flowers around her, bright and strong one last time before the winter sends it to sleep again. The winters are harder now than they used to be. It's usually cold, except at the height of summer, but no one is really surprised.

She thinks it's okay that the Planet is taking its time to heal. Other people don't, but she's never really minded what other people think. She can forgive the winter because the Planet still isn't well yet - it might not ever be completely well again, but it's trying, and that's good.

Beneath her fingertips, the soil is fresh, still full of darkness and depth and life. Her hands are cold, but she doesn't stop. The ground hasn't frozen yet. Until it does, she'll still wake up every morning and come out, feeling her way through the air and the world like she always has. Her father always tells her how she almost floats. He doesn't really say it like that, but she understands him.

The shawl around her shoulders - Elmyra's shawl - slips a little, but she doesn't fix it. It was a gift, and she doesn't want to get it dirty. She probably shouldn't have worn it, but it feels good and she likes the way it smells. Not like flowers, or cherries, or anything dramatic or tragic. Just like Elmyra, whatever that may be. She was never really able to analyze and doesn't think she wants to, because that would ruin it and she likes the mystery.

Elmyra doesn't try to be mysterious. Elmyra is constant, a heartbeat or a sunrise under a folded bun of gold-lined brown, spiraling and flowing like the earth. Marlene hasn't found anyone she loves more, even though Elmyra isn't her mother any more than Barrett is her father, but ever since Barrett went back to North Corel after the horrible, half-remembered light in the sky faded and Midgar was left in ruins, Elmyra was as close to her as anyone could be.

Barrett sends letters, and packages, and visits much more than she expected after he left the first time. It broke her heart, but Kalm was home, not North Corel. She would have gone with him, if he'd let her, but she was a little girl, and Corel was a ruined nightmare, and Tifa was here in Kalm, so it's more like home than anywhere else.

As it is, she sees Barrett at least once a month, and they talk all the time. The pictures he sends now show white rows of houses much like those around her, covered with new tiles and filled with new families, pretending that the past doesn't really matter, determined to try again. Barret is her north star, the most beloved person in her life, a real father even if she isn't his real daughter, and full of grace where others think him coarse and rude. He knew what was best, and he insisted she stay in Elmyra's care.

Marlene wanted to stay with Tifa, and tried it for awhile, and though Tifa is like a big sister, it was harder than she would have guessed. Tifa eventually moved from Kalm into Midgar where she felt she was needed, and Marlene writes to her alot, almost as much as she does Barret. Marlene keeps promising to visit Tifa at her new bar and hotel; a real big, fancy place, it sounds like. She supposes she probably will, but in the meantime Tifa comes to Kalm pretty often, buying things and staying with them when she can, so it's like things haven't really changed. So now Marlene lives with Elmyra and it's sometimes hard too, but every day, they learn.

They were friends first, not family, and there were still lines, rituals, certain... aspects that no amount of time could explain away. Marlene could bring in as many flowers from the garden as she liked - Elmyra buries her face in the vases and basks in the scent like it was the only air worth breathing, a tradition carried out with reverence every morning. But not the yellow ones. Elmyra doesn't touch the yellow flowers, and instead of asking why, Marlene lets them grow outside in the sun instead, away from the windowsills and not mixed with the sprays of white or deep red or fragile lavender that keep a warm vigil each day on the kitchen table.

There is an upright piano in their home, made in the rebuilt Nibelheim and shipped across the western sea by a man who had knew her father. A very famous man, with bright yellow hair and a distressing habit of smoking indoors, but fame is secondary and Marlene always treats everyone the same, always poured the tea slowly and offers them the best china when they stay, no matter who they are. Just the same, she likes Cid very much. He always brings her strange seeds, or sometimes baubles and paper lanterns from Wutai, or chocolates from the slowly recovering Gongaga. In return, she gives him jasmine or sometimes gladiolus to take for his room on his airship, and another bouquet for his wife. Sometimes, if he can, he brings Barrett with him and they both stay, usually for a few days or longer. Occassionally, Tifa comes too.

The piano they keep upstairs. It took Cid most of the morning and most of the crew to get it there, balancing like a lonely, well-polished elephant in the room they had dedicated to it. Cid taught Marlene many new words that day. Elmyra taught Marlene to play. Nothing too fancy, just enough to be able to enjoy it, and Marlene does. Next to the garden, the small, somewhat stuffy room upstairs, cramped with the black instrument and the yellowing books of music and theory, is her favorite place to be. In the mornings, when she's gardening, Elmyra sometimes plays. It's the only time Marlene really gets to hear her, since the woman won't play when anyone is nearby, so she's started leaving the windows open - just a little, so the music can reach her, curling catlike around her shoulders, sometimes more comforting than the shawl.

All of the songs she plays she's taught Marlene - and some of them Marlene can even play better than she does - except for one, very slow and soft and sad only because Marlene thinks it ought to be a sad song, a memory of something far away and very bittersweet, something that never should have been lost. The song always makes her think of a girl, back somewhere in the past, another one of the fragments like a piece of shattered materia cast out by the weapons-jeweler into the street. A tiny part of something very precious.

Marlene digs down, letting the music water her as she in turn pours her tin, slightly dented can into the furrows, watching them fill and then watching the water recede, pulled away to do its work. She loves the earth. For her, earth is heaven, and prayer, and the true, beautiful creation of God is not man but the wondrous things that grow in the ground, that make life full and right and old, as old and as perfect as the sea.

Kalm has changed, since the day of fire, when everything fell over Midgar so long ago. It must have really happened - some of the memories have to be real - because all of the world is defined by that moment, that one, impossible moment when the earth rose and sky stopped falling. Inside, the planet is very different than it once was. The green life is still there, but it isn't for them.

Instead of a small, sleepy village, a small city now sprawls outward, built still in very much the same style as before, blue and polished and white and shining, like a clean smile, full of sound and possibility where there used to be only lull. She remembers - it can't be that long ago, can it? - when the city square held a towering object that hummed and twisted like it was alive. Now, it's full of trees. She sometimes sits there when she gets tired of the garden. With Mako power gone, the center of Kalm is usually quieter than the outer reaches, and she's happy about that.

Midgar rests on the very fringes of her memory, so far gone that even though she was _there, _it feels like she wasn't. That's something else she doesn't regret.  
Midgar, rebuilt but not fully, after fifteen years still holds the same aura of repression that it always has. Oppressed, this time, under its own weight. The city has suffered, along with the rest of the world. She thinks that Midgar probably suffered more, though.

Elmyra used to say something about Babylon, and she remembers someone else saying that too, and how it has something to do with Midgar's conscience, if a place can even _have_ a conscience. She isn't sure what she thinks about that.

The door is closed, when she comes back to the house. Elmyra usually leaves it open, if she isn't playing piano, when Marlene goes out to garden. She has her hands full of roses and fumbles with the knob a little before it catches, swinging open with a single, poorly oiled note of apology. Elmyra has a visitor, Marlene can tell. The kettle's boiling and Elmyra never does that until ten; when Marlene comes in with vegetables, or sometimes bread or milk from the markets if she goes.

She stops at the sink, washing her hands and laying out the roses along the tiled counter top. Most of their heads are firm, beaded with water, but some are open and full, waving delicately as she spreads them, washing the soil from her hands before she recuts the stems, handling each flower with a practiced care. No one else takes as much time, she's sure, and she's aware that it shows. When she sells her flowers, she makes more than anyone in the city. Often, though, she'll give them away, if someone admires a blossom or if the mood takes her. She likes being generous when she can.

Her hands wrap around a fist of stems, grip firm but not too firm. She's learned how to hold them just right so that the thorns don't break the skin or even really hurt. She thinks she should teach other people that. It's a very important skill.

Two teacups and saucers are missing from the china cabinet across from the sink when she opens it to fish out a spare vase. Elmyra's only real treasure, her silver tea set, is missing as well, and Marlene knows who's visiting. Only one guest ever takes tea when Elmyra offers, or at least indulges Elmyra the way he does. Cid usually brings his own beverages, and Barrett is family so he always makes his own tea and drinks it from the cracked, blue pottery mug he loves so much.

But _he, _he knows how much it means to her, to feel good for this one moment, to sit and to do normal things, and to talk about things that aren't important, and Marlene is so surprised - every time - at how well he does it, because he doesn't ever seem to talk too much anyway.

Every Sunday Marlene has tea with Elmyra, but it's usually not formal, and nothing is guarded and they can be friends, like they always are. She doesn't know how things are with him because she's never stayed - she takes the morning out into the garden with her instead, and lets them have their time. It's a private interaction and the tea is really probably only an excuse. That, and Elmyra doesn't do coffee very well.

She knows that he - in spite of his small frame and the hint of indifference around him - carries so much weight. She also knows, even if he doesn't, that it's getting lighter. Very slowly, day by day, the way God meant for it to be, the Planet was fixing itself. Maybe it wouldn't stay that way forever - good things rarely did - but it was a precious thought, that things could be okay.

Of course, scars never really faded. The injury might be gone, but the effects last as long as the body does, usually not impeding life and function, but forcing the body to stop and learn again. To find a new way to do what it always did. He is getting there, and so is Elmyra, and she doesn't try to push them toward it. She's already done a lot for him, probably as much as he's ever let anyone.

He looks just exactly like she remembers. Everyone else changes, but not him, for some reason. Barret explained it to her once, about why he's different, why he hasn't even seemed to age in all this time, but it doesn't really matter to her. Like everybody else, he just is who he is. She's come to terms with that - isn't going to change the way she acts around him, and she thinks that's why they get along.

Marlene hasn't been to Midgar since it's reconstruction. She thinks of this as she settles the flowers into the vase, dropping stem after stem in a pattern that doesn't look like a pattern until it's finished. She hears people talk about it sometimes, about how the new president started from the slums up, building a newer kind of equality. It hasn't been totally fair, because life is above petty demands for fairness and suffering and injustice draw the Creator toward the one who suffers them. The new Midgar will never walk fully upright, but she's so pleased when she hears that the president left few details unaddressed.

The sectors of Midgar are being named again. They once all had individual names and it's a terrible thing when names are lost, Sector six hasn't been renamed yet, but she knows it should happen very soon. On the lowest level of sector six, an old cathedral is still being restored. It's taken a very long time, about as long as it did for them to build one in Kalm. Marlene knows that a building can't ever really house anything, and that it doesn't matter _where _she is as long as her intentions are good.

At the same time, she thinks she should go to sector six from time to time, before or after it gets its name back, and make sure that it's taken care of. The flower girl... Marlene knows the similarities are there - that they _have _to be there. Even if she could replace her, the one she still doesn't know very well, except through the memories of other people, she wouldn't want to. Aeris was who she was, and Marlene is who she is, and Elmyra never reminisces, the way everyone else but Barret does.

When Aeris left, it punched a void into everyone's life. Marlene can still see the broken pieces if she looks close enough. She isn't going to stay here forever, though. It's just until things get better, until they start to fill on their own without so much constant care. She doesn't feel like she can leave yet, when there are still so many little things left to do. Maybe she should take some flowers to Midgar. God knows it deserves some. 

There are sounds from the living room. A quiet laugh, then the tinkle of a spoon swirling in a cup. It isn't good manners to make noise when you stir your tea, but Elmyra will overlook it.

The second time he came to see them, it was still painful to watch. The both of them were awkward, neither knowing how to say what needed to be said or ask what had to be asked. But, he was familiar enough with the idea of addressing things that she felt she could say what _she _needed to say, what she hadn't even told Elmyra. He was comfortable with them, and she could approach him without feeling quite so exposed.

I saw her, that day. She opened her eyes. He smiled at her. It wasn't a real smile - not quite - but it was very close, and much more real than she hoped. 

She still remembers the scent of the rose he put in her hair, from one of the smaller buds that had tragically broken from its stem when she was arranging them. He knows. At the end, there really is a purpose, and whenever people suffer, Divinity goes there with them. The flower girl, the one in pink who helped her so long ago, whose life Marlene isn't intentionally living, knows. At the end, they were never alone.

He leaves today, and the smile is a just as small, just as fragile, and she returns one of the same proportions, safe and brittle, like a tender green shoot. He goes, and she remembers him again, the way the small flower twirled in his fingers when he offered it to her. Back then, it was a priceless gift, even if the memory isn't always stable. She _knows _it happened.

When he's gone, Elmyra looks stretched and thin. She worries about him when he goes, worries that he won't come back again, but Marlene thinks it's about more than just what he can tell her. Marlene still isn't very old, but she's always been pretty good at reading things. Elmyra loved Aeris, that much is very clear. Everyone who ever met her loved her, all in their own way, and he and Elmyra are so much alike because they loved her in a slightly different way, one that Marlene doesn't try to understand.

They can give each-other something, in the awkward silences in the little dining-room, not quite elegant enough to call a drawing room, with the popping crackle of a fire behind an iron grill and a saucer in their laps. Marlene still thinks it's funny to think of him holding a saucer, but the idea suits him somehow.

It might not be soon, but she knows, as soon as he leaves, that he'll come back again. Elmyra hugs her very tightly, as always burying her nose in the vase still teetering on the table. It's cliche to love roses for some reason. Marlene thinks it takes a special kind of person to ignore that and love them anyway.

Fin

1 The song mentioned (the actual inspiration for this piece) can be found at  
www ocremix org/remix/OCR01295/. It's called Aeris lives.


End file.
